Chapter 8 Thoughts

Chapter 8 had some very insightful ideas on how to organzie a day with writing. First and foremost was to find a time for DAILY writing. This is something that if I didn't have enough time, I skipped. Now I realize that I am doing more harm to my students by not giving them the opportunity to write each day. Even when I do have the time I am spending too much time teaching (isolated skills) and not allowing enough time for the actual writing. :( As I think to next year I am going to definately schedule in time every single day for writing for at least 45 minutes to an hour. I want my students to become confident in themselves as writers. Chapter 8 gave some great information about doing more freewrites to build endurance and confidence, something that I have been reading about in The Daily 5 for reading. Students must build their stamina in order to be able to sustain for long periods of time and they need long periods of writing time to actually get information on paper.
As I was reading I was typing notes of information that I thought important (wish I had done this for all the previous chapters) and this was something I thought was important to refer back to:

Suggested Time Frames for Daily Writing

Demonstration or minilesson based on student's needs and interests as well as curriculum requirements	5-30 minutes Typically 5-15 minutes
Sustained writing - Students writing (uninterrupted, quiet) -Teacher may also be writing (on same topic as students) -Students having a one-on-one content or editing conference with the teacher -Students conversing and conferring with each other	20-40 minues
Whole class share	10-15 minutes

As with anything new, students must be taught how to do something, it must be modeled correctly and incorrectly. The teacher must model exactly what is expeced like writing on every other line and why, dating each entry, writing on the correct side of the paper and more. We can't expect our students to do these things on their own without any demonstration.


I really connected with the idea of writing more short stories, I am the teacher that gives long projects for the students to do like their autobiography. Instead next year they are going to make glogs for their autobiographies. I am also excited about the idea of the beginning of the year doing the example about writing a snapshot of each student and publishing in a book. What a creative and cleaver idea to get to know each of the kids and use for future students, visitors, and staff.